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arouse at all that feeling of horror and loathing that it aroused in her
husband, but a desire to act, to find out all the details of his state, and
to remedy them. And since she had not the slightest doubt that it was
her duty to help him, she had no doubt either that it was possible, and
immediately set to work. The very details, the mere thought of which
reduced her husband to terror, immediately engaged her attention.
She sent for the doctor, sent to the chemist’s, set the maid who had
come with her and Marya Nikolaevna to sweep and dust and scrub;
she herself washed up something, washed out something else, laid
something under the quilt. Something was by her directions brought
into the sick-room, something else was carried out. She herself went
several times to her room, regardless of the men she met in the corridor,
got out and brought in sheets, pillow cases, towels, and shirts.
The waiter who was busy with a party of engineers dining in the
dining hall, came several times with an irate countenance in answer to
her summons, and could not avoid carrying out her orders, as she gave
them with such gracious insistence that there was no evading her.
Levin did not approve of all this; he did not believe it would be of any
good to the patient. Above all, he feared the patient would be angry at
it. But the sick man, though he seemed and was indifferent about it,
was not angry, but only abashed, and on the whole as it were interested
in what she was doing with him. Coming back from the doctor to
whom Kitty had sent him, Levin, on opening the door, came upon the
sick man at the instant when, by Kitty’s directions, they were changing
his linen. The long white ridge of his spine, with the huge, prominent
shoulder blades and jutting ribs and vertebrae, was bare, and Marya
Nikolaevna and the waiter were struggling with the sleeve of the night
shirt, and could not get the long, limp arm into it. Kitty, hurriedly
closing the door after Levin, was not looking that way; but the sick man
groaned, and she moved rapidly towards him.
“Make haste,” she said.
“Oh, don’t you come,” said the sick man angrily. “I’ll do it my
myself....”
“What say?” queried Marya Nikolaevna. But Kitty heard and saw
he was ashamed and uncomfortable at being naked before her.
“I’m not looking, I’m not looking!” she said, putting the arm in.
“Marya Nikolaevna, you come this side, you do it,” she added.
“Please go for me, there’s a little bottle in my small bag,” she said,
turning to her husband, “you know, in the side pocket; bring it, please,
and meanwhile they’ll finish clearing up here.”
Returning with the bottle, Levin found the sick man settled com-
fortably and everything about him completely changed. The heavy
smell was replaced by the smell of aromatic vinegar, which Kitty with
pouting lips and puffed-out, rosy cheeks was squirting through a little
pipe. There was no dust visible anywhere, a rug was laid by the bed-
side. On the table stood medicine bottles and decanters tidily ar-
ranged, and the linen needed was folded up there, and Kitty’s broderie
anglaise. On the other table by the patient’s bed there were candles
and drink and powders. The sick man himself, washed and combed,
lay in clean sheets on high raised pillows, in a clean night-shirt with a
white collar about his astoundingly thin neck, and with a new expres-
sion of hope looked fixedly at Kitty.
The doctor brought by Levin, and found by him at the club, was
not the one who had been attending Nikolay Levin, as the patient was
dissatisfied with him. The new doctor took up a stethoscope and
sounded the patient, shook his head, prescribed medicine, and with
extreme minuteness explained first how to take the medicine and then
what diet was to be kept to. He advised eggs, raw or hardly cooked,